Life can’t always be about dessert, occasionally you need to have a main dish to pull an everyday meal altogether. Oh alright, so maybe every single meal should really focus on the main dish; can I help it that I’m almost always surrounded by cookies and Bundt cakes? All I know is that when I’m craving something heartier, the recipes below are the ones that I’m totally going to dream about, drool over, and most likely make over and over again until that craving is satisfied.

You might not consider tomato sauce to be a main dish, however, let me just tell you now, in our house it is. I almost always have some sauce stashed in our freezer, which I can pull out, defrost, and then use to make whatever my little heart desires. Sometimes that’s pizza, sometimes it’s a dip to dunk bread in, and other times I just keep it simple and throw it on some cooked pasta.

Greatness often happens when you’re not even looking. When I made this five-ingredient Improv Cooking Challenge recipe earlier this year, I had no idea that it would win me first place in Taste of Home’s “Summer Sides” recipe contest. This simple stacked potato dish is not only pretty tasty, it’s also crazy beautiful to serve, especially when it’s topped with salsa and sour cream. Make sure to keep an eye out for this recipe this summer in Taste of Home magazine.

This is the kind of sandwich which makes you wish farm-fresh tomatoes were available all year round. Yup, it’s simply one of those meals you find yourself dreaming about and literally drooling over. It’s also probably one of the few foods I would totally choose to eat for the rest of my life if stranded on a desert island and given a choice of eating one meal over and over again for the rest of my life.

It doesn’t take much to turn an ordinary, boring, and no-fuss potato dish into something spectacular. Simply add bacon. Well, I guess folding in a mustard vinaigrette couldn’t hurt either now that you mention it. We wouldn’t want the bacon to get lonely.

Not only is Soup Saturday Swappers one of my favorite groups, it’s also been the inspiration for many of my favorite recipes this year. Soups, chowders, and stews are just so easy to throw together and I love that they’re so easy to freeze for later use. This ham and bean chowder was one of my favorites because it tasted pretty friggin’ amazing, photographed beautifully, and also gave me an excuse to vent some of my frustrations about rude party guests.

The only thing better than throwing bacon on a sandwich is throwing perfectly cooked shrimp, tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella on a sandwich. With just a hint of basil and mayonnaise, this stuffed little salad roll totally won my taste buds over. Once again, this is the kind of sandwich I could happily eat every single day for breakfast, lunch, or dinner without any complaint.

Nothing makes me angrier than pasta salad that is pretty much all pasta. I want loads of ingredients in my pasta salad. If I’m being totally honest, I want the pasta in my pasta salad to be a bit character with a bunch of other ingredients stealing the show. That’s why this side salad won me over. It’s full of all the good stuff; olives, deli meat, cheese, veggies, what’s not to love ya’ll?

How do I know when I’ve come up with an over-the-top main dish recipe? Well, let’s just say that when I make that recipe three times in one week, it pretty much means that it’s a winner. This sheet pan meal is packed with flavor, contains very simple ingredients, and takes very little effort to make. The secret is to bake all of the ingredients for different amounts of time. Don’t believe me? This is one you need to try out for yourself. Fair warning though, you may just end up making it again the very next evening for dinner.

Make sure to follow along with Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck this week as we share our best and most favorite recipes of 2017 in the Countdown to 2018.

FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, & LUCK

Each petal of the four-leaf clover stands for something; faith, hope, love, and luck. It requires all of these to survive Lady Brenna of Fairfax, an adventurous Bengal cat with a very unyielding personality.Read More...